In order to save the trouble of applying ink on a stamp face at each stamping, there is conventionally known a stamp whose stamp face material is a porous sheet of sponge rubber or the like impregnated with ink in advance. For example, Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Kokai Publication No. H10-100464 proposes an apparatus that performs platemaking of a stamp face consisting of a melting/solidification portion inhibiting the permeation of ink and a non-melting portion allowing the permeation of ink on a stamp face plate (a stamp face material) by fixing a stamp with the stamp face plate made of a porous sheet attached to a wooden base on the platemaking apparatus, pressing a thermal head on a surface of the porous sheet and moving the head, and selectively applying heat to heating elements of the thermal head.
There is also a thermal transfer printer that performs printing as follows: an ink film formed by applying a thermally melted ink on a film is arranged on a record sheet and then heat is applied to heating elements of a thermal head in close contact with a surface of the ink film having no ink applied thereon, thereby causing the ink on the ink film to be melt-transferred on the record sheet. In such a thermal transfer printer, any isolated dot included in image data to be printed can be collapsed and cannot be printed. Thus, for preventing the collapse, Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Kokai Publication No. H07-081124 proposes a method for controlling to supplementarily apply heat also to a peripheral region to be non-heated.
Suppression of dot collapse described as a problem to be solved in Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Kokai Publication No. H07-081124 is the same problem to be solved by the stamp face platemaking apparatus proposed in Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Kokai Publication No. H10-100464.
Meanwhile, regarding the amount of heat to be supplementarily applied, Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Kokai Publication No. H07-081124 only mentions a total amount of heat and does not provide any more details.